Once you have made your decision to spend your next holiday on the tropical island paradise of Bali, Indonesia, there are a couple of bookings that you’ll need to make as soon as possible to lock in the lowest price. Naturally you’ll make airplane reservations, finding a flight with the best mix of convenience and economy, but when it comes to accommodations you have a much wider range of choices available to you than you might realize.

Renting villas in Bali is popular if you have the money, and there are plenty of hotels to choose from in every price range. You should know before you book, however that in the last 10 years or so there has been a real boom in apartment buildings on the southern end of Bali (near the airport), and this opens up a whole new category of accommodations for tourists and other short-term travelers.

The owners of most of these apartment units are absentee owners, which means they don’t live in Bali all year round, but instead treat their Bali apartment as a place to get away for a couple of weeks or a month at a time on business or for pleasure. It shouldn’t be a surprise that when these apartment owners are gone they often are interested in renting their units out to tourists.

It’s no more difficult to find the owners of Bali apartments on the Internet that would be to find and book a hotel room. You can peruse many listings on the Internet and get a good idea of prices and accommodation level that suits you. Once you make contact with the owner of the unit that interests you, you’ll most likely find him or her much more approachable than the clerk at the front desk of a hotel. You can expect to have questions about the apartment, the neighborhood in which it is located, nightlife, shopping and restaurants around the unit all answered before you ever book. If you’ve never been to Bali before this could be a real vacation-saver.

One thing is for sure. If you’ll be coming to Bali for a vacation you’ll enjoy the incredible mix of vibrant local culture and virtually everything that you’d expect from a world-class tourist destination. My suggestion would be to also think a little bit outside of the box when it comes to booking accommodations, because not only might it be cheaper, with all the features of Bali apartments you might actually enjoy an apartment rental much more than you would a hotel or expensive villa.